Templates are commonly provided for many different types of documents. The templates facilitate batch processing that may pull information from a database to fill in placeholders of a template and result in customized documents. Some examples include a mailing to multiple customers. The address field and salutation may be placeholders in a template of the mailing, and when filled in with data from a customer database, each customer may be mailed a letter that is personalized. Other examples may include invoices, purchase orders and many other types of business documents produced by many different types of programs, from word processors to spreadsheet programs.
In server oriented business management systems, many different clients may be served by a single system, which may consist of multiple computers and storage devices coupled to the clients via network. Templates in such systems may be treated as a development object. Development objects are available across all clients, while the data to populate the templates for each client is separated between clients. Since the development objects have global aspects, which means that they are available to all the clients, a template change instigated by one client will show up in the template for all clients. Such a change may not be desired by all clients.